《TAIPEI TIMES》 G7 reiterates call for peace in Strait

WORRYING ALLIANCE: While the G7 leaders also vowed to provide more support to Ukraine, Blinken said China was the ‘primary contributor’ to Moscow’s defense industry

/ Staff writer, with CNA

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The G7 on Friday issued a statement reiterating the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, calling it critical to global security and prosperity.

The foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, as well as the EU issued the joint statement following a meeting held on the Italian island of Capri from Wednesday to Friday.

In the statement, the G7 described peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as “indispensable to security and prosperity for the whole international community,” and called for the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues.

“We support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations, including in the World Health Assembly and WHO technical meetings,” they said.

However, they added that there was no change in the basic position of G7 members on Taiwan, including their respective “one China” policies.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the meeting that the G7 is united on the need for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula.

The G7 is “also united in standing up to China’s unfair and nonmarket practices, especially when it comes to overcapacity that is flooding the markets of our own countries with new products and technologies that are heavily subsidized and so underpriced,” Blinken said.

In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday released a statement expressing its gratitude to the G7 nations for reaffirming the importance of peace and stability across the Strait.

Taiwan, as an important country in the Indo-Pacific region and a responsible member of the international community, would continue to enhance cooperation with G7 members and other like-minded countries to safeguard freedom and openness in the region, defend the rules-based international order and strengthen global democracy, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, the G7 powers also pledged to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses to counter increasingly deadly Russian attacks, while telling China to stop supporting Moscow’s military industry if it wanted good relations with the West.

The powers said they had to do more to help Ukraine, which is struggling to hold off stronger Russian forces, and urged de-escalation in the Middle East, where the deep enmity between Israel and Iran risks triggering a wider regional conflict.

However, the ministers also said the multitude of global crises was pulling leading democracies closer together.

“We emerge from this meeting of the foreign ministers more united than ever,” Blinken said.

Regarding Beijing’s aid for Moscow, he said that while North Korea and Iran were the main suppliers of weapons to Russia, China was the “primary contributor” to Moscow’s defense industry.

“If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t, on the other hand, be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” he said.

Echoing that sentiment, German Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock told reporters that Berlin could not tolerate seeing China forging closer ties with Russia.

“If China openly pursues an ever closer partnership with Russia, which is waging an illegal war against Ukraine ... we cannot accept this,” she said at the end of the Capri meeting.

Additional reporting by Reuters

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES